Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

People are wondering "How far does this go? How can Twitter say this is not cool, but allow something like violent movies or games? Where's the line?"

The leader of the United States encouraging law enforcement and the military to shoot American citizens for looting, that's the line.

We have laws in the UK that curtail speech like that, "Inciting violence" is a crime.

Which I agree with to some extent, you're not innocent of a crime because you convinced a person to harm another, just because you were too cowardly to get your hands dirty yourself.

But the US is rather famously not British, so I'm not sure if it's a relevant thing to add to the discussion.

Part of the issue is if you're hostile to the speaker, you can interpret a call for peace to mean a call for violence. Try to imagine for a moment, that this comment was not made by an evil racist orange man, but someone you like... maybe Ghandi. If Ghandi said: "Looting leads to shooting." Which interpretation would you more likely choose?

1. Please don't loot, it escalates violence and people will get killed

2. Let's kill all the looters

Whether it's Trump or Ghandi, we're imagining we know something about the internal state of the speaker's mind that we don't know.

This seems like attempting to weasel-word. If Ghandi said "We have a lot of guns, and looting leads to shooting", it's a lot more clear that the meaning is (2). Trumps tweet didn't just say that one sentence, it said, in order:

* "the Military is with [the governor]"

* "any difficulty and we will assume control"

* "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"

There's a clear causal relationship between these three statements, this is not a plea for peace, it is a threat of violence.